Story About The Salem Witch Trials example essay topic

The warrants for Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were issued on February 29 and on March 1 they were taken to the meeting house of Salem Village to be examined by magistrates John Hawthorne and Jonathon Corwin. It was there that Good and Osborne maintained their innocence, but Tituba confessed. It was impossible to tell if Tituba's confession was true or false, but that did not matter to the magistrates, what mattered was that there was a confession. "The devil came to me and bid me to serve him", she stated in her confession (Witchcraft at Salem). After her confession the questioning went further. Tituba admitted that the Devil had come to her in the shape of a man- a tall man in black, with white hair.

Other times he had come in the shape of an animal (Chadwick Hansen). She went on describing how Good and Osborne had a part in tormenting the afflicted girls and that there were others who helped, but she did not know their names. The examinations of Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne afforded grounds for suspicion and for further examination. Tituba and Osborne were examined again on March 3, and Tituba and Good on March 5.

On the seventh the three women were sent to Boston jail. The afflicted girls continued having "fits", but now someone new had appeared. Unlike, the first three accused whose economic situations were poor and they had social problems, a member in good standing of the church at Salem Village was accused. Her name was Martha Corey; Ann Putnum, whose household was a center for witchcraft accusations from the very beginning, accused her. Corey was sent to jail to await her trial. Two days before Martha Corey's examination, the Reverend Deodar Lawson arrived in Salem Village as a visiting preacher.

At this time there were ten afflicted persons- three girls from nine to twelve years old; Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, and Ann Putnum; three adolescent girls: Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, and Elizabeth Hubbard; and four married women: Good wives Putnum, Pope, Bibber, and Goodall (Karlsen). During his sermons some of the afflicted women cried out and then soon the rest joined in with their "fits". Lawson also helped out in the "witch hunt" in Salem Village. He wanted evidence that the accused were witches, however, confession was often the best evidence one could hope for. More concrete evidence was occasionally to be had (Hansen). A diligent search might turn up images with pins in them, ointments and potions, books of instruction in the magical arts.

If the accused body was searched there could be a Devil's Mark. This was also called a "witch's tit", and was thought that Devil himself made this to suck the blood of the witch. The people of the village believed in a number of tests for witches. The most common is the water-ordeal, where the accused is bound by a rope and dragged through a body of water. If she floated she was a witch. Another test was asking the suspect to recite the Lord's Prayer and another was the laying-on-of-hands.

It was believed that a witch could not say the Lord's Prayer correctly, since she regularly said it backwards at her witches's ab baths. The laying-on-of-hands were when the suspected person was made to touch an afflicted person in the midst of a fit. If the touch seemed to cure, the theory was that the spell had been taken back into the body of the witch from whom it came. This is one of the most common types of faith healing.

On the same day Lawson returned to Salem, Rebecca Nurse was accused of witchcraft. She was announced guilty. The "afflicted" persons cried out against John Procter and his wife Elizabeth. The following day the Procter's, with Sarah Close, Rebecca Nurse, and Martha Corey were all sent to Boston jail. On April 11, Mary Warren, one of the "afflicted" girls was accused of signing the Devil's Book. She was sent to prison on April 19.

On April 19 Giles Corey, Abigail Hobbes, and Bridget Bishop were examined. Giles Corey made a very bad impression by lying on the stand and that was a very serious matter in Puritan Massachusetts. Abigail Hobbes was a wild young girl who had cultivated the reputation of a witch. Bridget Bishop had a long-standing reputation for witchcraft and it was rumored that she had bewitched her first husband to death.

There was much more against Bridget Bishop than her reputation. Two men testified that when they were employed by Goody Bishop to tear down the cellar wall of the old house she formerly lived, they found several puppets made up of rags and hogs' bristles with headless pins in them that pointed outwards. This is still a classic charm of black magic in today's society. Bridget Bishop was the first person to be executed in Salem. It was becoming obvious that the people who confessed were not being brought to trial and their lives were saved.

Twenty people died, nineteen of them hanged, and one pressed for refusing to plea. We cannot be certain as to how many were lying or telling the truth, but it seemed very clear that over a dozen were innocent. During the witchcraft trials, many innocent people were made to be guilty by the "afflicted" girls who cried out into fits while the accused person testified, thus making them look guilty. They typical order of events in the Salem witchcraft case was: (1) the swearing out of a complaint for acts of witchcraft; (2) a preliminary examination during which the afflicted persons had convulsive fits; (3) an indictment for acts of witchcraft performed during the preliminary examination; and (4) the trial (Hansen).

These trials were very hard to find if one was lying or not so the people of Salem called in an expert. The Reverend Cotton Mather was called in for his opinion and asked to help with identifying who was guilty or innocent. Some of his suggestions and points were that he believes that Devils have sometimes afflicted men on their own initiative, without being called upon by witches, in this case he thinks witches are involved: "there is cause enough to think that it is a horrible witchcraft which hath given rise to troubles wherewith Salem village is at this day harassed, and the indefatigable pains that are used for the tracing this witchcraft are to be thankfully accepted and applauded among all this people of God". Another opinion Mather deals with is that the troubles at Salem were caused by Devils, but not by witches. He believed that the afflicted girls were possessed by Demons and not by witches. He also believed that witchcraft was a sin, rather than a crime.

Accusations of witches had increased and now warrants issued people in groups of half a dozen or more. When a community looks only for evidence of guilt and ignores or suppresses all contradictory evidence, the result is a witch-hunt. A witch-hunt was developing in Salem as the community fell itself so involved in evil that it was not capable of accepting good. The witchcraft situation was a very complicated matter. The jails were filling up with suspects due to the increase of accusations. In seventeenth-century prisons you were required to pay for your lodgings, so that a lengthy imprisonment could bring terrible economic hardships.

On May 10, Sarah Osborne died in the Boston jail. On June 2, Bridget Bishop was sentenced to death. She was hanged on June 10. Sarah Good was hung on July 19.

The government did not know what to do with all the accused so they notified Cotton Mather to write a document. It is a polite and tactful document that begins by sympathizing with the afflicted persons and commending the magistrates for their efforts to date, and ends by urging the prosecution "of such as have rendered themselves obnoxious" (Hill). Brown, David C. A Guide to the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692. Worcester, MA: Mercantile Printing Company, 1984. Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1987.

Hansen, Chadwick. Witchcraft at Salem. New York, NY. George Brazil ler, 1969. Richardson, Katherine W. The Salem Witchcraft Trials. Salem, MA: Essex Institute, 1983.

Rinaldi, Ann. A Break With Charity: A Story About the Salem Witch Trials. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company.